10 Things Android Does Better Than iPhone OS (Long ass article quoted)

Professey Chin

Now this is how you flame bait :cool:

Since its 2008 debut, Android has grown - not only meeting all of the functionalities of the iPhone, but besting it in nearly all aspects. Here is our list of the top 10 things Android does better than the iPhone. 1: Android can Run Multiple Apps at the Same Time

Starting with version 1.0, Android has been able to run multiple applications at the same time regardless of whether they are system apps or apps from the Android Marketplace. The current version of iPhone OS does offer limited multitasking, but only allows native applications such as Mail, iPod and Phone to run in the background. Android users benefit greatly from this discrepancy, as they can receive notifications, listen to music, or even record GPS data without keeping the application open. Apple will try to level the playing field with iPhone OS 4, granting developers access to a small and limiting list of APIs that can run certain services in the background, but it's a long way from the true multitasking that Android has.
2: Android Keeps Information Visible on Your Home Screen

One of the key features Android has is a customizable home screen keeps active widgets right at your fingertips, always accesible and always visible - without having to launch an application first. There are widgets for just about every app in the Android Marketplace from playing music to checking the weather and keeping up to date on Facebook. Meanwhile iPhone users are force to flip through their app list to locate and launch each app. If you wanted to check the forecast, for example, you would have to find the app, launch it, and then wait for it to load. With Android, all of that information can be displayed directly on your home screen, never more than a finger swipe away.
3: Android Has a Better App Market

It's true that Apple's App Store has over 180,000 applications, while the Android Marketplace has only just broken the 50,000 mark but Android's rapid growth and adoption give it the potential to catch up to the iPhone App Store. Android also has another advantage: a completely open market. Apple receives around 10,000 app submissions per week, yet many apps are overlooked because they appear too simple or denied because a similar app already exists. The Android Marketplace is driven entirely by its consumers, so the best app is the one that succeeds - not the first one to reach the market. In addition, the Android Marketplace doesn't censor its apps, so the possibilities are truly endless.
4: Android Gives You Better Notifications

The iPhone has some trouble with notifications. Because it's restricted to pop-up notifications, it can only handle one at a time and because it lacks multitasking, applications must be open in order for them to make notifications. Android, on the other hand, has a convenient notification bar which displays an icon for every notification you have waiting. The notification bar can also be pulled downward to reveal more detail about each notification. Android also allows app developers to make notification details viewable from the lock screen, something the iPhone can only do with native applications.
5: Android Lets You Choose Your Hardware

Apple users are encouraged to "Think Different" but when it comes to the actual hardware, they don't get much choice. You can pick the color, either black or white, and you get to choose between the 16GB or the pricier 32GB version. Other than that, you're stuck with the 3.5-inch, 320x480 pixel display, 256MB of RAM, and 600MHz processor. Because Android is an open platform, manufacturers have the freedom to pair it with any hardware they want, like the Nexus One (with 3.7-inch, 480x800 pixel display, 512MB of RAM, and 1GHz Snapdragon processor) or the Motorola Droid which has a physical keypad. Obviously, available selections will vary by carrier - speaking of which....
6: Android Lets You Choose Your Carrier

AT&T truly is the iPhone's weakest link. The iPhone's success turned the country's fastest 3G network into a staggering mess of dropped calls and dodgy data connections. If you lust after an iPhone and live in an area with poor AT&T coverage, you're stuck struggling with low signal quality, slow data speeds, and missed calls. Android devices are available on every major cellular carrier (although AT&T only offers a single, somewhat underpowered, Android phone). Verizon has the Motorola Droid, Droid Eris, and Droid Incredible to start. T-Mobile has the Nexus One, MyTouch 3G, Behold II, and will soon carry the MyTouch Slide. And Sprint has the Hero, Moment, and plans for the very promising Evo 4G. No matter where you live, Android lets you pick the carrier that's best for you.
7: Android Lets You Install Custom ROMs

The iPhone can be Jailbroken for some additional functionality, like installing apps that aren't available in the App Store, but the overall experience is the same. You're still stuck with the same exact interface. Similar to the Jailbreaking movement, Android has a small community dedicated to building custom ROMs for Android devices. Not only do Custom ROMs bring the same functionality Jailbreaking does, but they also bring an additional level of customization to your phone. There are ROMs that port custom UIs from one device to another. Other ROMs strip down bulky features and optimize for speed. With Android, nothing is out of reach.
8: Android Lets You Change Your Settings Faster

Smartphones have been gaining more and more functionality over the past few years: Wi-Fi, GPS, 4G, Bluetooth, etc. While these are all great and necessary additions, they have very adverse affects on battery life. In attempts to counter poor battery life, users have taken to toggling system settings like turning on Wi-Fi or 3G on only when they are needed. iPhone users are stuck digging around in the system settings every time they want to use the internet or a Bluetooth device. Android lets you use widgets to manage your settings directly from your home screen - and for those lesser-used settings that might not have dedicated widgets, you can also create shortcuts on your home screen to take you directly to the setting you want to change.
9: Android Does Google and Social Integration

With Smartphones giving us constant connectivity, it's not surprising that the majority of our computerized lives are moving online. We have email for our messages, Flickr for our photos, Google Docs for our documents, and Facebook and Twitter for our social lives. Android offers the ability to integrate all of this natively. Your Gmail account can be automatically synchronized with your phone. Photos taken with your phone can be automatically uploaded to Flickr. Your phone can even be linked to your Facebook account and can sync your phone contacts with your Facebook friends - complete with profile images, email addresses, and phone numbers. The iPhone can do this only through use of third party apps, and is nowhere near as seamless to use as the Android alternative.
10: Android Gives You More Options to Fit Your Budget

If you've ever thought about buying an iPhone, you have probably noticed the price tag. The older iPhone 3G costs $99 with a two-year commitment and performs sluggishly with the latest OS updates when compared to the 3GS (which will run you a whopping $199 with two-year agreement). Because Android is an open source platform, it is very cost effective to implement which means savings for the end user. Every major cellular carrier (except for AT&T) has at least one Android phone available free with two-year agreement. Of course these are lower end Android devices, but they are still comparable in performance to the iPhone 3GS. The most expensive Android phones (which significantly outperform the iPhone 3GS) are $199 with two-year contract.

http://gizmodo.com/5554293/10-things-android-does-better-than-iphone-os

Some things I agree with, some I dont (improvements can always be made). They probably published this cause of the iPhone 4 hooplah.Dont think theyre invited to WWDC cause of that anymore hehe:pac:

Venom

The Android Marketplace needs work both in terms of user friendliness (shown at Google IO which seems to be coming soonish) and expanding the amount of countries that have access to paid apps.

Cianos

From what I've seen so far, the Android marketplace is way behind Apples. Whatever about quick access to settings/notifications etc, these are all secondary to what actually matters - the apps. I'm hoping that the Android market gets a lot more support from developers and catches up to Apple but I think Android will always be playing catch up in this regard.

Abelloid

Cianos wrote: »

From what I've seen so far, the Android marketplace is way behind Apples. Whatever about quick access to settings/notifications etc, these are all secondary to what actually matters - the apps. I'm hoping that the Android market gets a lot more support from developers and catches up to Apple but I think Android will always be playing catch up in this regard.

What apps in particular? Do you just mean the quantity or apps for specific functions?

TheDoc

Read part three again, its pretty critical.

Friend off mine is a google employee and he used to do some coding back in the day way.

He picked up "locale" and was loving it, but he was annoyed that there wasnt some other stuff on it. So he picked up the dev kit, made some plugins and put them on the market.

He paid a once of fee of 25 dollars for the developer account and he can lash **** up as often as he wants.

His plugins are pretty popular already and are a big hit with locale users.

Point is he wasnt happy, so he went and made something better.


Now if that was App store? You cant firstly do alot of plugin design with ipod apps. Secondly you have about 4-6 steps to go through before your app is Q'd for inspection and evaluation. Then after all that you might be told no, and you just say **** that.

The App store is riddled with old applications that are no longer innovative, and jsut crank out updates every so often.

The anroid marketplace looks FAR superior imo. I have all the same apps i have on my ipod touch and better ones from android. I havnt paid for any app ( i will buy locale however) and I'm more then happy with the quantity.

I think people are looking at numbers and just going " a here they are miles behind"

When in reality they are not. They have all the critical day to day apps you will need.

I know alot of iphone app dev's from college who do it part time and i follow a few more on twitter and game with a few more, pretty much all of them except one have dropped iphone developement, they were blown away how easy android developement was, and they love the fact they are open to do what they want, and have no boundaries.

The Iphone has had a nubmer of years head start on Android...but Apple are not and never have been "innovative". They will be caught up quickly imo, seriously, it took them two years to get multitasking out, and they made SUCH BIG DEAL OF IT at the OS4.0 preview.

I'm now fortune teller, but I wouldnt be suprised to see Apple sales slow down, while Anroid sales continue to accelerate, I'd imagine it won't be too long before we see them neck and neck.

you just have to look at adverts.ie and see the people selling iphones to fund a desire, and after letting some mates play around with my desire, 4 of them went out and bought the desire next day.

(Carphone warehouse in swords still rocking that €349 price)

partyatmygaff

That's all fine and well but the one thing Android still lacks (With the exception of 2.2) is native code execution. Having to run your apps through Java really doesn't appeal to many developers. For example an app like a PSX emulator or coreplayer for example. Neither have arrived yet on Android for the simple fact they are simply far too inefficient if executed through Java.

Mr E

Ultimate Chin wrote: »

Now this is how you flame bait :cool:

By the way, posting this pro-android article to an android forum is not flame bait.

Double dare you to post it to the Apple forum.

seamus

There are a couple of slight inaccuracies there - you don't have to have an app running to get notifications, and we're much freer in terms of carriers over here in Europe - I thought AT&T had lost the exclusivity in the States too, maybe I'm wrong.

What is clear though is that Apple need to seriously up their game to continue to fend off the threat posed by Android-based phones. The amount of companies looking for Android developers when you look at the jobsites shows that companies are really taking this thing seriously and investing their time and money in it.

When a tablet comes out with Android installed, then the real fun will start

Knasher

That's all fine and well but the one thing Android still lacks (With the exception of 2.2) is native code execution.

AFAIK Android has had the NDK since version 1.5, so while its not 100% native, the only thing you really have to do in Java is the starting and stopping of the app. Everything else can be written in c for speed. Obviously for portability reasons Google would prefer if you could put as much as possible into davlik. Put you do have the option if you need it, the android doom port uses native c with a davlik shell.

Knasher

There are a couple of slight inaccuracies there - you don't have to have an app running to get notification

The article says you need the app open to make notifications, as in if you are using a twitter app, it can't notify you of an update unless its running somewhere. I'm not an iPhone user, but my understanding is that at the moment the app has to be kept running in the cloud and it can then use the push notification to send you a text message. On android the app can keep running locally on your phone and send you notifications from there, which for some applications is obviously better, or from 2.2 on can keep running in the cloud and push intents to the phone, which can then trigger applications and do pretty much anything. Obviously security will need to be pretty tight around this feature but I can think of a number of areas which would really benefit from that.

Goodshape

Have had my Desire for over a month now. Had both iPhone 3GS and iPhone3G before that.

Honestly can't think of a single app I miss from iPhone. I had some really nice looking apps that I used to whip out and show off to people... but did I actually *use* them? Can't think of any that I did.

There's certainly a bit of a design gulf between Android and iPhone tough. Twitter client as an example.... Twitter for Android, and any of the twitter apps I've tried for Android... don't really come close to the features and usability of Tweetie/Twitter for iPhone. Facebook is the same, plenty of other cross-over apps are the same.

But.... I wouldn't even think of trading back Android's widgets for the iPhone gloss.

TheDoc

Try seesmic

I use it on my pc for a long time now, and minute I saw it on the app market I was all over it.

Overs everything you need, cant think of anything it lacks for a twitter app.

Goodshape

Might try it out but again... those widgets... the offical Twitter app widget is exactly what I need. That the app itself isn't quite up to scratch is less of an issue when you don't even need to open it most of the time.

Professey Chin

Mr E wrote: »

By the way, posting this pro-android article to an android forum is not flame bait.

Double dare you to post it to the Apple forum.

I meant flame bait on gizmodo.

On the Apple forum??Are you nuts!!:eek::eek:
Theyre already about to burn down the guardian or some paper over a similar article and thats in another country!!Im more local so ill be hunted down like a green robot dog!

Brian

Expect this all to step up with the iPhone 4 release coming up... both sides getting touchy.

Professey Chin

Victory shall be ours :cool:

lord lucan

Baza210 wrote: »

Expect this all to step up with the iPhone 4 release coming up... both sides getting touchy.

Tbh i think Apple are more worried by Google and Android than Google are worried by Apple. The pace of development on the Android platform is amazing and whatever new fangled developments Apple bring out will probably be overtaken by Android(if they've not been overtaken already!).

TheDoc

Baza210 wrote: »

Expect this all to step up with the iPhone 4 release coming up... both sides getting touchy.

I see what happend there

OI

I moved from an iPhone 3g and I thought when I got that i'd never want another phone. But apple ommited some really important features such as Bluetooth file share and streaming was only introduced recently. I love my desire, hate the name, but it does everything so well. Very disappointed with battery though. Just about managing 20 hours or that

TheDoc

Just say

Dessssiiiiirrrreeeeee

In the voice from the guy who does the movie trailers